


ONCE, IN LOTHERING

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:12:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-game fic, tension between Carver and his brother. And healing. Written for choowy and millilicious @ tumblr. <i>Once, in Lothering, Father cut Carver’s hair. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	ONCE, IN LOTHERING

Once, in Lothering, Father cut Carver’s hair.

His hands smelled like elfroot and yew and a little of leather, too. Father was the only mage who smelled like leather.

But Carver wouldn’t sit still for him, not the way he did for Mother, while Father’s fingers carded through the hair at the back of his neck, grown long after an even longer winter.

‘Sometimes,’ Father explained, ‘it’s not fair for one person to do something _all the time_. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes,’ Carver replied, and regretted lying to save face ever after, because it meant he’d never get another chance to ask—that Father would never get another chance to answer.

And Garrett laughed at him that night over supper, _and_ Bethany too, when they both saw how uneven his hair was.

*

As much as Carver expected it—‘Well, Carver, no _wonder_ you wanted to join the templars so badly; I can’t imagine you’re regretting it _now_!’—it never came, not even once they pulled out of port, not even with the rocking of the boat on the unsteady waves, not even before or during or after the thirteen times Carver vomited into the bucket by his bed, seasick as ever, but also missing his lyrium.

Thirteen and a half, now.

Carver wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

It was steady sometimes, unsteady others. When the elf paced above-deck the lyrium in his skin troubled Carver just about as much as it must have troubled _him_ , although Carver knew by now that was one of those thoughts most people called _unfair_. Unfair, and childish, and downright stupid—he was beyond speaking them out loud, but not beyond thinking them privately.

And that was probably what made him a lesser man than his brother.

*

Garrett came and went, smelling of sea water and sea air, with rope-burns on his hands that he didn’t try to hide. He might have once, when they were younger, when those things mattered or seemed like they did, but then he had his healer to look after him now. A new healer. Not Father, and thank the Maker for _that_.

But Garrett’s wounds never lingered, not the same way Carver’s headaches did, the twitch at the corner of his eye he had to rub out every morning when he woke to the sound of the gulls, and Isabela shouting captain’s orders.

‘It gets worse before it gets better, you know,’ Garrett said, on one such visit, rather than any of the other things he could have said, all those words of his Carver was expecting. He ran his hand through the hair at the nape of his neck, a familiar motion, one elbow crooked as he stooped low in the doorframe.

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Carver asked. ‘I’m _living_ it, brother.’

Mother wasn’t there to scold him for it, or Bethany to purse her lips in that way Carver had never forgotten, or Father to shake his head, a quiet signal, what he called a _tell_ in a game of diamondback.

They’d left everyone else behind.

‘Charming,’ Garrett replied, just like old times, even though they weren’t.

*

It got worse before it got better—that was the story of Carver’s life, the one that no one ever bothered to tell. He came up on deck now and then and followed Fenris with his eyes, until Garrett appeared to steer him down below-deck again, all sun-burns and good graces.

Carver’s brother smiled with too much teeth these days. He hadn’t always; this was a new development, one that must have happened while Carver was preparing for his Vigil, learning how to use the lyrium just as it used him, or listening to the other recruits gossip about the Champion. There were a lot of things Carver could have told them about their hero, but whenever he tried the words turned to dust in his mouth, the same hot ash that blew bitter over the blackened plains of Lothering, and he realized he didn’t want to talk about _the Champion_ at all.

Ser Carver was a title, too. And at least it was a name.

It meant nothing in the galley, Carver’s bed tucked away in a far corner, while Garrett peeled potatoes from a barrel with a knife. There was nothing funnier than watching a mage try to handle one of those, and Carver almost laughed before he winced instead.

‘Isabela says I’m all thumbs up there in the rigging,’ Garrett said, sucking on a split finger to stop the bleeding. ‘She says Merrill takes to it more naturally than I do. Friends can be so cruel, Carver.’

‘So can family,’ Carver replied.

*

The nights were the worst—damp hair against damp skin, a tangle of sheets and the rhythm of the ship doing nothing to soothe him. He wanted a hand, Mother’s hand, to touch his brow the same cool way as when he had nightmares as a child; she always said, _Carver, when you share a bad dream with someone else, it stops meaning anything_ , and that was the only time he didn’t care about sounding stupid, the only time he admitted he saw Bethany and Garrett and Father being taken, with a sword made of wood in his hands not enough to stop his family from leaving.

He didn’t need the lyrium. He knew that. He didn’t need family, nor friends, nor the name he wanted, nor all the names he didn’t have. He didn’t need the armor and he didn’t need his mother, not anymore. He didn’t need his brother, either, but Garrett came anyway, crouching beside the narrow pallet and holding him down.

Carver thrashed. He’d never been a good patient. Father tried to heal the scrapes on his knees and he said he wanted to keep them—wanted the scars as proof, but of what, he couldn’t remember—and he was bigger now, big enough to throw off the man his brother had become. Not quite as tall as Carver always remembered, but casting such a long shadow nonetheless.

Garrett’s back hit the deck. He made a sound; Carver knew he was winded. Then, he kneed Carver in the balls, and the pain was more real than anything he wanted or needed, because the pain was everything he had.

‘Right in the bloody jewels,’ Carver moaned, sinking back against a crate, breathing too ragged and too hard.

‘With you, they’re more like painted glass, anyway,’ Garrett replied, rubbing his throat with a wince. A bruise bloomed just under the bone on his left cheek. Carver focused on his white teeth bared in a loose grin, sharp in the dark. ‘No big loss to anyone here.’

‘I’ll take you down again if you keep talking like that,’ Carver warned.

Garrett laughed. He sounded like a little boy, but more than that, he sounded like Father. ‘I’d like to see you try,’ he said.

*

Carver fell asleep against his chest. When he woke, Garrett was snoring, not nearly as steady as the waves outside the hull of the ship. He didn’t smell of elfroot or yew or leather, just like potatoes, and skin, and a heat beneath that made Carver shiver. He wasn’t sure which of them was sweating more, but the worst had passed, and it felt like everyone else on the boat was no longer with them, all of them far-off and dreaming and not a part of their lives, if they ever had been.

One of Garrett’s hands was pressed against the back of Carver’s head, fingers threaded through his hair. They twitched in his sleep before he snorted, once, and Carver knew he was awake again.

‘Watching people while they sleep?’ Garrett’s thumb rubbed a short line against Carver’s scalp. ‘You never learn.’

His voice was muzzy, his words slow. He was the idiot Carver had always known, no more and no less than the bastard he always hated, certainly not anyone’s champion here. Not even when he sacrificed a full night’s sleep to tend those self-inflicted wounds he loved and hated—loved because he needed them, hated because he’d never be able to mend them all.

Garrett was no healer, not like Father or Bethany. _But he’s just like your Father_ , Mother once said, mending a tear in his handkerchief, and Carver had known then he’d always be jealous. Even of Garrett’s burdens. _Especially_ of those.

‘You were snoring,’ Carver said.

‘I hope I was drooling, too,’ Garrett replied.

And Carver bent his forehead to his brother’s brow, feeling the wrinkles shift against his skin as Garrett smiled.

 **END**


End file.
